Computing clusters and other distributed computing systems have a number of requirements that go well beyond the requirements of stand alone computing systems. Therefore, when products are developed for use in distributed computing environments, it is typically desirable to test the products for distributed computing environment compatibility in addition to any testing that might be required for use with standalone systems.
To facilitate testing of computer systems, test software (e.g., test programs or test suites) is typically written that is designed to exercise the product to be tested in an environment similar to that in which the product will be used. However, clustering systems tend to be somewhat more complicated than stand alone computing systems and therefore testing a storage device in a fully operational clustered computing environment tends to add complexity to the test system. This added complexity can sometimes make it challenging to isolate the sources of errors. Therefore, it would generally be desirable to be able to pretest storage devices (and their related components) for cluster compatibility without requiring that the tests be executed on a fully functioning computing cluster.